Director Sofia Coppola explores the nuances of luxurious lassitude, as in Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette. Her new hub of comfy ennui is L.A.’s Chateau Marmont, retro-nest hotel for the rich and cool. That includes young movie star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), who can plink Bach on the lobby …
A faith-based made-for-TV biopic that somehow found its way to the big screen. Teen-surfer Bethany Hamilton made headlines after a shark relieved her of an arm. AnnaSophia Robb looks the part, but the young actress doesn’t bring much in the way of urgency to the role of a traumatized teenager. …
A sci-fi thriller, but not scientific and not thrilling. Chicago glows like Oz as semi-dead war hero Jake Gyllenhaal wakes up on a commuter train in another man’s body. He is a time-tripping projection of the Source Code project run by chill dorks (Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright). Michelle Monaghan is …
In lieu of a review, here are some actual lines of dialogue that should give you a sense of what has been offered in lieu of a watchable film: “Never underestimate the power of puke.” “What part of ‘chillax’ don’t you understand?” “Pull my finger.” “I always knew you were …
How do you say "Neil Simon" in French? A professional sperm donor, going by the name Starbuck (Patrick Huard), anonymously fathers hundreds of kiddies. Eventually, he falls victim to a class action lawsuit brought against him by 142 of his 533 “children.” To make matters worse (and to pad the …
Writer, director Rod Lurie basically traces Sam Peckinpah’s misogynistic tale of revenge as macho-baptismal. The location shifts from England to Louisiana, but don’t expect this to do much for tourism. Instead of a mousy architect (Dustin Hoffman) there’s a toothy screenwriter (James Marsden), and Kate Bosworth replaces Susan George as …
Director Zachary Levy documents the daily clean-and-jerk of Stanley Pleskun, the self-proclaimed “strongest man in the world (at bending steel).” He is part mystic, part self-help bumpkin — a man hopelessly lost to delusion. Though people seem generously impressed by his fledgling acts, what Pleskun mostly evokes is a sense …
Wildly imaginative Welsh teen Oliver (Craig Roberts) plots to lose his virginity to a sly, morose girl (Yasmin Paige) and frets about his nerdy dad (Noah Taylor) and pinched, resentful mom (Sally Hawkins). Submarine has mood fluency and neat observations, but director-writer Richard Ayoade often falls back on flashy technique. …
Cherub-faced Emily Browning finds herself in a world of digital overkill — the live characters stick out like squashed flies in a coloring book. The story involves a group of unwilling prostitutes bent on escape from their prison-like brothel. We are then transported through the protagonist’s imagination to a fantasy …
Animation is colorfully giddy in fantasy sections about a world-web takeover by a toy villain, Love Machine (not a salute to Jacqueline Susann’s once-famed novel). Mamoru Hosoda’s cartoon vision also has bland hero teens, sub-Miyazaki naturalism (trees, clouds, water), sub-Ozu celebration of family values, miserably generic American voiceovers, even a …
Director J.J. Abrams’s spot-on remake of Steven Spielberg’s ’80s ode to the feeling of childhood, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. It’s all there: the broken home, the mysterious Visitor (more frightening this time, but as in Abrams’s Cloverfield, still somewhat beside the point), the looming shadow of grown-up authority. What is new …
A slumming decline from the bold, cutting intelligence that Errol Morris showed in The Thin Blue Line and other films. His documentary subject is Joyce McKinney, a former Wyoming beauty queen turned sex worker and minor celebrity. Her obsessive fling with a shocked Mormon missionary became tabloid fodder in Britain. …
Michael Shannon, who often seems like Frankenstein looking sadly for his doctor, plays a scared and scary guy in the flat Midwest. His sinister dreams and fantasies clue him that a vast storm is coming, and he hurls his fragile family into panic by building a big shelter (he already …